Brawler: Stories

Story Prize winner Groff (Florida) delivers a gorgeous collection about families transformed by desperate circumstances. In the spectacular opener, “The Wind,” a mother and her three children flee from her abusive husband after her 12-year-old daughter takes a blow meant for her. On the road, with the husband in pursuit, the daughter takes drastic action to save the family. “To Sunland” follows Joanie, a young woman who moves her intellectually disabled older brother into a group home following the death of their mother. In the title entry, teen Sara excels on her school’s diving team but has little control over her mother’s increasingly dangerous disordered eating. In “What’s the Time, Mr. Wolf?” a young man whose family has nurtured his sense of entitlement, whether by giving him a car despite falling short of his expected SAT score or buying his way into a top college, faces the limits of nepotism when his uncle and grandfather fire him from the family banking business because of his heavy drinking and poor performance. Throughout, Groff sketches her characters with scalpel-like precision (Sara’s malnourished mother is “a skin bag with chalk in it, far too light to be human”). Each of these heartbreaking tales will linger in the reader’s mind. Agent: Bill Clegg, Clegg Agency. (Feb.)